First day

My emotions are in full swing right now. I had a full-out ugly cry in my car this morning. You see, today is Ryan's first day at his new school.

Ryan will go to his new school for special needs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays half days. He'll ride the bus there and then the bus will drop him off at his full-day school on those afternoons. It is going to be a big adjustment for all of us.

This morning, we all drove to school like we always do, but only Stokes and William went in and got dropped off. Then I had to go to another school to meet Ryan's bus.

In Mama's car waiting for the bus

Back to school supplies, diapers and his book bag

Selfie with Mama while waiting
on the bus

When the bus pulled up, I walked him to the door and handed him to the bus monitor. I can't explain it but my heart constricted. I quickly turned and went back to my car to get his book bag and "stuff" so I got a minute to compose myself. I came back to the bus and made sure he was buckled in OK and got a picture of him before he left. He didn't seem scared at all. He's so brave. I wish I could be as brave as Ryan.

In the school bus

He's in there...

...and there they go.

I immediately got into my car and sobbed. I know he'll do great and this school is going to be so wonderful for him but my emotions cannot seem to be put in check right now. Just writing this up is making me cry all over again! I can't wait to see him this afternoon. I wish he could tell me all about his day.

I've already emailed the teacher and keep refreshing my email to see if I got a response. In my head I know I need to be patient because she has to teach the class and I definitely want her full attention to be there in the classroom with those students, but I am dying to hear back from her.

Another kicker today for the emotional roller coaster was that at the other school, it was transition day. A lot of the kids from Ryan's class moved up to Stokes and William's class and a lot of their former classmates moved up to another class. I'm not sure why I would get teary over that, but just seeing all of Ryan's friends in the class with Stokes and William choked me up. I know Ryan will make new friends and his new classmates will be just as sweet as those that left, but it is breaking my heart a little bit today.

You know the saying: The only thing that's constant is change. Well, that sure is true. I know my boys will continue to grow up and move into each subsequent stage in life, but I also know that as their Mama, I will also love them and treat them as my babies and get emotional when I'm nervous or scared or worried for them. Luckily these are are all good changes and updates and I have confidence in each one of them to take the transition head-on. They're such good boys.

From Ryan's new school orientation last week:

Ryan and his new teacher

I think we're going to like Miss Kristin

Ryan meeting and playing with
his new OT

Please say a prayer for Ryan to have a good first day of school, along with all of the other kids in Greenville County. Pray for all the teachers (and therapists), bus drivers, aides, staff, etc. I pray this is a good and successful year for all!

Hard to say goodbye

This is a tough week for us, emotionally. Ryan is starting at a school for special needs children next week. At this new school - which is supposed to be amazing - he will get all of his therapy. In fact, a prerequisite to attend this school is to cut off all outside therapies. They don't want conflicting methods and goals, which can happen if he gets one type of therapy at school and another therapist working on different things in another appointment. I understand, and their methodology makes sense, but it's still hard. All that means that this week, Ryan is having his final appointments with his therapists and I'm getting discharge paperwork from them to provide to his school. We've had several different speech therapists that we've worked with over the last couple of years, but Ashley and Emily, his PT and OT, have been working with Ryan from the start. They've been amazing. The support, encouragement, positive reinforcement, and general developmental foundation that they've helped us with cannot be understated. I've relied on these women for so many things over the last several years and I consider them true allies and sweet friends. While we haven't worked with Barbara, Ryan's speech therapist, for as long as the others, I've really enjoyed getting to know her and I appreciate her ST knowledge and her energy.

So, this is a sad week. It's very difficult to say goodbye to these incredible ladies that mean so much to Ryan and to me. They've been through so much with us and have become almost like an extension of family.

I refuse to think that this is an official goodbye. Maybe it will be more like a "see ya later" and under different circumstances. Like, maybe they will participate on our March of Dimes team for the walk next spring, or meet up for ice cream with us, or come see Ryan walk and talk in an epic celebration! I don't want to lose touch with them. They're too important and special to us.

Pictures of final therapy sessions with Ashley and Barbara and Emily from this week:

Ryan and Miss Ashley

Working hard on standing up

Getting some loving

We love Miss Ashley and will miss her so nuch!

Snacks with Miss Barbara

Choosing between different pictures

Ryan and Miss Emily

Eating lunch with Miss Emily

She's so helpful! We love her!

Dinner for MaSha

MaSha's birthday was last Friday and she spent the weekend at the lake with some of her best buddies. Since we didn't get to see her on her actual birthday, we had a little mini celebration for her at our house this week. The boys were so excited to see her and she surprised them by coming with me to pick them up from school. They were thrilled! We had a yummy dinner and a little dessert and the boys got to give her her birthday gift. It was a fun celebration for one of our very favorite people!

"Happy birthday to you!"

Blowing out the candle

Fun in a box

The boys and their beloved MaSha

P and L triplets

We had a playdate over the weekend with some of our triplet friends, the Longs! Carly and two of her boys, Maddox and Zachary, came over to our 'hood to hang out. We went to the pool for a while, which was not as awesome as we were hoping for, due to thunder (get out of the pool for 20 minutes each time it thunders) and a looming storm. We stayed for about an hour and a half and the boys actually got to swim for probably close to an hour, so it wasn't a total let down. Afterwards, we came back to our house for a little cookout and play time. We thought we might be able to play outside in the backyard, but the storm moved in and poor Thomas had to grill our burgers while holding an umbrella. He's a trooper. 

Unfortunately, Brody wasn't able to come visit us this time. He and his dad Jim stayed home. He had surgery earlier this summer and was in a cast for 6 weeks and just got it off last week. It's taking him some time to adjust to all the changes, and Carly didn't want to rock the boat and potentially upset him. We pray for ongoing recovery for Brody and for strength for his parents and brothers to continue being his supporters, comforters, and advocates. 

Maddox, Zachary, Ryan, William and Stokes

Silly boys!

Fun in the pool!

Maddox, William and Zachary

Hopefully we will have all 6 boys together next time we do a P&L triplet play date!

Olympics!

So, the 2016 Olympics in Rio has officially begun. The boys stayed downstairs with us for the first part of the Opening Ceremonies on Friday evening so that we could include them in this fabulous, patriotic, adrenaline dose of fanfare called the Olympics. Gosh, I love it!

Make no mistake, there's no room for regular tv watching in this house for the next two weeks. We will be broadcasting Olympics coverage pretty much any time our tv is on. I get so wrapped up in it! 

The boys and me in our most patriotic ensembles!

Daredevil Stokes and William

Ryan and William

William asked me to take this picture of him! :)

After Stokes got bored of posing for pictures and jumped
down off the couch...

Cutie boy

Is it just me, or do you suddenly feel like you could have been an Olympic swimmer (or runner or whatever), if only you had put your mind to it? Like you just know that this athletic greatness is in you somewhere? I do realize that I could never do gymnastics like that considering I struggled with my back handspring for three straight years during high school cheerleading, but almost any other sport I feel like is fair game for this nostalgia. If only I was 14 again, I would start training for the 2020 games. Well....probably...most likely...I would. I also kind of want to get in a lap pool right now and swim fast until I can't swim any longer (probably about 100M if I'm being generous - ha!).

But darn you, Olympics, for making me stay up so late every night! Midnight is not a good bedtime for me. Stop it, Olympics and NBC. I am tired. 

Opening Ceremonies!

Who's excited about the Olympics?!?! Me! Me!

This family is wearing our red, white and blue today in honor of the Opening Ceremonies of the 2016 Olympics in Rio tonight.

I absolutely love watching the Olympics and will turn on and watch whatever sport happens to be playing. Although I love both games, I think summer may have the slight edge.

CAN'T WAIT!!

Pics of our Olympics watching party coming soon!

Exciting weekend

Last weekend was awesome. We had a lot going on and loved it! We started the weekend on Thursday night....which made me feel like I was in college again (but not really) with a cookout with our small group at church. It actually apparently started out as a small group but has really been growing and when he include all the kids, it's not quite such a small group anymore. We're actually not great members as we can't seem to find much consistency between work dinners, travel, and just things going on in our lives to make it to our small group get togethers each week, but we'll try to do better starting this fall! Small group took the summer off so when we saw the email about a cookout, we jumped all over it. The boys had so much fun with our church friends and I think it's such a great experience for them to get to play with the other kids from our church. It was awesome and William and Stokes keep asking to "go to a cookout!"

"Small" group cookout!

Then Friday night, we got the chance to attend a gender reveal party for Matt and Katie Money. Matt works with Thomas and he and Katie are the sweetest couple! They reassured us that there would be other kids there at the party, so we went straight from work and school to their house to find out what they're having. Katie actually made this amazing video and posted it when she officially announced that they were expecting.

The party was so awesome! She had a table set up with 1/2 pink and 1/2 blue themed things - including iced sugar cookies, watermelon (girl), blueberry (boy), pretzels with pink and blue icing, etc, etc. She also had 2 small chalk boards with blue and pink chalk so you could vote for what gender you thought it would be. We talked to the boys in the car on the way to the party and they thought boy so we marked down 5 votes for boys. Katie also had pink and blue leis so you could sport your vote in necklace form during the party. They served pizza (lots of pizza!) and had blue water and pink lemonade. Anyway, it was really so super cute! The best part was the actual announcement. They know a guy that sells fireworks so they gave him the envelope with the gender from the doctor and he made smoke bombs with either pink or blue. The family gathered around Matt and Katie and lit the smoke bombs at the same time. At first they were lit but no color was appearing and I was starting to wonder what was going on, and then.....pink smoke started billowing up. It was so cool! We totally guessed wrong (I guess we just think in blue!) but it was the coolest reveal and we are so excited and happy for Matt and Katie!
Here's a pic collage of the announcement. The bottom picture shows everyone that was at the party.

Then on Saturday, we got to go to our dear friend Ava Lane's first birthday party! We've been great friends with AL's parents, Steph and Clark for year and years and they've been around for the boys's milestones and birthdays. I love how we are creating all these memories together. Stephanie, no surprise, threw the cutest birthday party! It was originally going to be outside, like a cookout, but with threatening rain, she moved it inside ahead of time and it's a good thing she did because it absolutely POURED during the party.

The adorable birthday girl with
her cousin Davis

B and Caroline

Pretty

The kids table

Time for cake!

Smash cake

Love them so much!

Just look at those cheeks!!!!

"What's this??"

Yum!
She didn't quite have the sweet tooth her daddy does.

Ryan with Rosie

Time for gifts!

Sweet birthday girl

All the kids!
L to R: B, Davis, Ryan, Ava Lane, William, Caroline, Stokes

AL didn't want any party of it!

After we left the party, we went directly to the airport to pick up MaSha. She had been out west visiting her cousins and attending a wedding and was gone for 10 days. Those 10 days seemed like they lasted forever. We sure did miss her! The boys were so excited to see her and Stokes and Thomas went inside to wait for her and be her greeting committee while William, Ryan and I stayed at the car. Then, timing being crazy as it is, Aunt Kathy, Uncle Duncan, Virginia and Abigail just happened to be driving through town after picking Abigail up from camp and so they stopped by the airport to say hi really quickly! It was such a fun, random and spontaneous reunion with both sides of our families!

MaSha and Uncle Dunc with Ryan

Aunt Kathy and Virginia with William and Stokes

The boys love their beautiful big cousins!

I, unfortunately, had to fly out to Dallas on Sunday morning for a work trip, but definitely left on a high note after such a fun and busy (for us anyways!) weekend. I loved it.